The rover Opportunity has settled into its winter haven on Mars.
The rover’s handlers plan to get Opportunity up onto Solander Point’s north-facing slope before mid-December, NASA officials said. But the golf-cart-size robot won’t hibernate through the winter; rather, it will continue to move about, investigating several different Solander Point outcrops.
The Moon’s dirtiest secret: Does its dust levitate?
This is a serious mystery left over from the Apollo missions which has significant ramifications not only for future research (the dust would interfere badly with any astronomical observatories) but also for any colonies that are eventually established.
The launch today of India’s homemade Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) was scrubbed when a fuel leak was spotted at T-74 minutes.
India has had trouble getting this powerful rocket off the ground successfully, with four previous launch failures. If they succeed this time, however, they will then have the ability to build their own rocket, capable of putting commercial payloads into geosynchronous orbit.
Formation flying in space, without propellants.
Electromagnetic formation flight (EMFF) gets around this propellant problem by turning the satellites in a formation into electromagnets. By using a combination of magnets and reaction wheels, spacecraft in formation can move and change their attitude and even spin without propellant. Satellites can change their polarity to attract or repel one another, turn, or shift their relative positions in any manner that doesn’t require changing the center of gravity for the entire formation.
A prototype is going to be tested inside ISS in the near future.
The competition heats up: Orbital Sciences has confirmed a September 15 launch date for the first Cygnus capsule mission to ISS.
The Russians have begun a six-hour spacewalk today on ISS to prepare the station for the arrival of a new Russian module.
The article also outlines the continuing investigation into the American spacesuit problem from the last American spacewalk, where an astronaut’s suit began to fill with water from an unknown source. It appears they have pinpointed the most likely cause of the leak, but appear to be having problems recreating the failure.
Update: The Russian spacewalk is over, all tasks completed.
For the first time since 1975 the Navy and NASA have teamed up to practice the ocean recovery of a manned capsule.
This practice was with an Orion capsule mockup.
The engineering tests to try to save Kepler have found that the mission is essentially over.
A headline at this New York Times article, “NASA’s Kepler Mended, but May Never Fully Recover” is wrong, as the telescope has not been “mended.” They have found they might be able to do some limited science, at the most. NASA is going to review this possibility, weighing the cost versus the benefit, and decide in the fall.
Russia has concluded its investigation into last month’s Proton launch failure and now says its next launch will be on September 15.
While the investigation pinpointed the problem — the installation of sensors upside down — none of the news reports about this investigation have mentioned what any corrective actions the Russians are taking. Meanwhile, at least one unnamed Russian engineer is questioning the schedule and the thoroughness of the investigation.
Engineers have identified twelve asteroids that could be captured with today’s technology.
Their number one most easily moved space rock is named 2006 RH120. A single rocket burn in 2021 would be enough to place this roughly 4-meter-wide asteroid into orbit around a Lagrange point by 2026. NASA could then launch people to study this object (which would barely be bigger than the astronauts themselves) and learn about its history.
The competition heats up: Grasshopper flies again, this time both up and sideways.
Video below the fold.
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